Coming in November, the 25th anniversary of the Sound Unseen Film and Music Festival will feature events at venues across the Twin Cities. This year’s festival includes documentaries, shorts, and films featuring legendary art-rockers Devo, 4 Non Blondes’ Linda Perry, Bob Dylan, The Black Keys, Swamp Dogg, Pavement, The Lunachicks, Broken Social Scene, The Mars Volta, 7th St Entry, DOA, the M-80 Festival, Spider John Koerner, girl bands from Scotland, D.C. punk, Peaches, and many more. In some cases, the festival — which is going on hiatus after this year’s edition — aims to provide an immersive experience by featuring live music and Q&A sessions with filmmakers and subjects.

Festival director Jim Brunzell joined The Current Morning Show host Jill Riley to discuss this year’s lineup and featured events.

This interview transcript has been edited for clarity.

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current. Well, hey, this year marks the 25th anniversary of the Sound Unseen Film and Music Festival, and it'll kick off in three different cities. Now here in Minnesota, Sound Unseen will be Nov. 13 through Nov. 17 in the Twin Cities, and then Rochester, Dec. 5 through Dec. 8. The festival also has dates in Austin, Texas, in December, as well as screenings throughout the year. The Sound Unseen series. Jim Brunzel is a long-time guest of The Morning Show. I think he might be one of the most returning guests. Jim is the director of the festival, and he joins me in the studio today. Jim, welcome back to The Current's Morning Show.

Jim Brunzell: Great to be back Jill, and good to know that I'm a long returning guest. And at the top of you know, most frequent visitors here at The Current.

Jill Riley: We've got a nice, long history with you. And it's easy to, because this festival has been going on, like I said, the 25th anniversary. But before we really get into it, the festival, as you know, it's always new to someone. So if you get to start by giving us an overview, telling us about Sound Unseen, what is it?

Jim Brunzell: Sure. Like you said in your intro, it's a music film festival. So we focus primarily on music docs, or rock docs. We have been exploring other threads and creativity with not only films about musicians and bands and artists, but also photographers, painters, comedians, just sort of retooling Sound Unseen year after year. Because with a lot of these music docs, a lot of them will premiere at festivals and then get scooped up by streamers, and are essentially streaming before our festival dates. We did notice that there were quite a few films and topics that we were interested in that we wanted to bring to town, so we just thought we'd throw them right in the festival. This has been going on since 1999 and it was started by a group of volunteers, sort of out of Oak Street Cinema and Minnesota Film Arts era. They wanted to bring cool music films to the Twin Cities that weren't otherwise being shown.

Jill Riley: So the community part of it, and the way that you guys curate the festival has really been part of the evolution. You just brought it up there, Jim. You wouldn't have thought about having to compete with streaming 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So I imagine that the folks who have been keeping this going for 25 years, you either, you know, put your blood, sweat and tears into it and figure out creative ways to evolve, or it fizzles out. Sound Unseen is a volunteer-run festival. So it's gotta really mean something to you that this has kept going for so long. Can you speak to that a little bit

Jim Brunzell: I think a big part of it for me personally is I've just always been invested in films and music and books and culture. I started off as a volunteer in the Minnesota or Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Fest and I was hooked. I just knew that I wanted to contribute some way to the community and the hometown here of St. Paul, Minneapolis, and just figure out a way to keep that going. And once I took the reins from the director before me, Rick Hansen, in 2012 I didn't think I would be still doing it, to be honest, Jill. I just thought it was sort of something that I could tap into some resources and creativity and bring some cool films to town and pass it on. I've been involved now 17 years, along with a lot of other people that have helped out and pitched in and really made this quite a community engagement and event that people look forward to year-round.

Jill Riley: I'm talking with Jim Brunzell, the director of the Sound Unseen Film and Music Festival. Well, Jim, one of the things we're looking at here, you know, at The Current we got a little just sneak peek of the of the films of the events. Now we noticed that there's a film set for opening night, and it's about a beloved band. It's not a hat, by the way. It's an energy dome. Let's not forget that. But what a cool film to open the festival. Can you tell me about the Devo documentary?

Jim Brunzell: The Devo doc was one that we saw very early on. I just happened to be at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where it premiered. I sat in the front row, and the band members were there, and the director, Chris Smith, was there. And you know, immediately after I watched it, I just knew we had to have it. And you know, when you're watching something in January, do you think it will be available in November? We didn't know. So we just made sure to have those talks very early on, and we got hooked into the production team and executive producer. We had some other talks with some people locally about how we could do this properly and do it right. And, you know, it all just worked out that this was a very special film to open with. It's very entertaining, and one that's thoroughly, you know, impressive, just the scope of the whole history of Devo and the landmark setting that this band set out to do. And 50 years later, they're still performing live, and they're still relevant as they were back in the early 70s.

Jill Riley: You know, Jim, when you talk about you're at the Sundance Festival, and you're sitting basically behind the director. I think that just sparked in my mind something really special about Sound Unseen. It's really more than sitting and watching a film and taking it in. Over the years, I've been in situations where I couldn't sit on my couch and stream that experience, because the director will come in, or folks that were the subject of the documentary will be there. That's another thing that makes Sound Unseen so special.

Jim Brunzell: Yeah. It's part of the whole curating programming process. We start at the beginning of each year, and big credit goes out to program director Rich Gill, who watches countless movies and submissions. People blindly send things to us just because they want to have their film screened at our festival, and Dash Donato and Kat Swenson on the shorts. They've watched so many films on their computer, at their desk, or on their couch. For me, because I do have a little bit more flexibility, it's important to travel to these festivals if I can afford to. It's important to see them with an audience, to see how they play with an audience. Because if you're watching something by yourself, you have to be able to translate that into an audience-type setting, right? Like performers need to perform on their own. They need to practice. They need to know certain beats. A comedian needs to practice the routine for us. It's important to watch these films with as many people as possible to get those reactions, to know where people are laughing, to know where there's sort of that dead pause in certain films, and, you know, some of them are really entertaining films that, unfortunately, we didn't have room to book. And then there's some that just jump right off the screen, and they just come so alive. And when you're watching that with an audience and hearing that reaction, and then listening to the creators or the artists talk about it, that it just becomes more immersive. And so that's something that I felt was very important to the selection of films that we have this year.

Jill Riley: I'm talking with Jim Brunzell, the festival director of Sound Unseen, the Sound Unseen Film and Music Festival this year being the 25th anniversary. Hey, Jim, closing night, there's a film about a woman that I find to be a fascinating character, especially with the trajectory of her career. You would know her from the band 4 Non Blondes, I'm talking "What's Up? [What's Going On]." She carved out this pretty incredible, more of a producer and songwriter role to the stars in the music industry. I really want to get to know more about her, and I'm talking about Linda Perry.

Jim Brunzell: Yeah. So Linda Perry has this documentary film on her called Linda Perry: Let It Die Here. It's directed by actually a Sound Unseen alumni, Don Hardy, who, a few years ago, we showed his previous film on the San Francisco psych band, the Residents. Typically when we know alumni are directing projects, or have projects in the near upcoming future, we reach out to them. We knew that Don was working on something, he was a little coy about what it was. But then when we saw it got announced for the Tribeca Film Fest, we immediately reached out, and we started having those conversations. At first we were just interested in bringing the film, but then it started to grow, and it was like, "Well, what if we really could get Linda Perry to come and attend and be part of the celebration of her life and the story and her film, and what if we had her perform?" And that's something with Sound Unseen we've wanted to do more of and this being a special anniversary, our 25th year, we thought, "Yeah, let's kick it up a notch, and let's bring in Linda Perry and have her perform along with her film."

And this really does go over many decades of her career and how she started off and became that one-hit wonder. I know some people take offense of that. Some people wear it as a crowning achievement, because it did rocket her to success at a very early age, very early on in the process. For her being in the music industry now, almost 40 years and learning she was more comfortable as a songwriter than a performer. I don't know her personally, but just based off the film, that seems like what she's more comfortable with. But so to have her perform and have her be here along with Don, the director, I think it will be a very special evening, and one that will go down in great Sound Unseen history.

Jill Riley: Yeah, that's incredible. I'm so glad that you were able to get her. That is going to be a really special night for the closing night of the Sound Unseen Film Festival. Now, the Sound Unseen Film Festival kicks off Nov. 13, and then runs through Nov. 17, and that's the Twin Cities portion. There's Rochester Dec. 5 through Dec. 8. When we talk about Sound Unseen, it's rock docs, it's films about music. But there also is that live music component to it. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jim Brunzell: We've got a lot of special guests coming in to perform. Joe Keithley, who's in band called DOA. There is a doc on him, specifically, DOA and him being part of the Green Party in Vancouver, Canada. And we're the second, maybe third, festival to screen this film. It's called Something Better Change. So Joe Keithley and director Scott Crawford, who's also alumni, we're showing a 10th anniversary of Salad Days about the D.C. punk scene.

Jill Riley: Very cool.

Jim Brunzell: So Scott and Joe will be in town for that, as I mentioned, Linda Perry. We're doing a live score with Katie Condon for the 100th anniversary of The Hands of Orlac. If you've never seen that film, it is a crazy, crazy film.  You don't celebrate too many 100-year anniversary film screenings too often. Also, something else that we're really excited about that has a local angle, is there's a film that premiered at South by Southwest earlier this year called Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted by Ryan Olson and Isaac Gale.

Jill Riley: As in the original D-O-G, d-o-double-G, actually. 

Jim Brunzell: Rich and I were at South By Southwest. We were at the premiere. We went to the party. We hung out with them. We saw Swamp Dogg. We just got on thinking like, "What if we brought this film to the Twin Cities and had Swamp Dogg perform?" That's exactly what's going to happen. So we're very excited to have Swamp Dogg and Moogstar come to the Twin Cities and perform, along with the film screening of Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. The other fun part of this year's lineup is, people mentioned we need more live music. We're partnering with Cloudland on four nights of special performances. And probably the topper of the performances, it's a lot of local artists, local bands, but we're fortunate enough to bring in Lydia Loveless for two solo performances, so we're very excited about that as well.

Jill Riley: Well, it sounds like a big year, the 25th anniversary year of the Sound Unseen Film and Music Festival. The Twin Cities kicks off Nov. 13. Jim, thank you so much for joining me today, before I let you go. Where can people find more information about Sound Unseen?

Jim Brunzell: Well, they can go to our website at soundunseen.com, and we're on all the social media channels, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Keep supporting the local arts. And thanks again, Jill.

Jill Riley: Happy 25th anniversary to you and to all the volunteers and the team that you work with to keep this thing going.

External Link:

soundunseen.com